VI. An interrogation of masculine and feminine representation in one of the most successful apps in history.
Even sweeter with friends!
Certainly, the "social" aspect of Candy Crush Saga cannot be overlooked. Indeed, it is one of King's primary marketing tactics and, I won't argue, is likely a heavy influence that speaks to the game's phenomenal success. But, it is an ironic sociality that King is selling here. CCS is heavily promoted as a social game - and, it does easily sync your progress from your phone, your tablet or your PC (via Facebook) - but you never actually encounter any other players while logged in and actually playing. Indeed, it's multi-platform construction/availability is indeed accommodating as
it allows users to have a seamless continuation of play when on-the-go and/or being
stationary at the desktop.Yet, you don't actively "play" with your friends. You can see what level they are on, or what score they earned on a completed level, but you never actually get to interact with anyone else. Well, except of course, Mr. Toffee and his Genie henchman.
The closest “contact” the user ever has with others is via the “high score” board that King displays
when you begin a level. In thinking of the Panopticon, these scores can certainly be
likened to inmate numbers. As Foucault muses, one prisoner in the Panopticon is certainly aware that there are
others around him, but he is prevented from any direct contact or interaction. So it is interesting that while many of my friends also play CCS, I never get to play directly with them. Our interactions are (not only monitored) but mediated, distilled and filtered down to an algorithmic name and number,, which is all we are privy to. We do not know how many attempts it took them to beat the level, or even if they are currently playing or not. Our sociality is thus, itself, institutionalized.
Our sociality is not only appropriated and re-fed to us, but is then also used against us in order to further police users and encourage consistent playing (doesn't that seem oxymoronic - policing and play?). Not only are our scores visible to other users, but that in itself can pressure some users to re-play the levels they have already successfully completed, just in order to get 3 stars or more, so that the individual user doesn't feel like they are "less than" others or took longer to complete a level than their peers. Perhaps this institutional competition is yet another tactic geared towards keeping the "inmates" occupied so they don't think to raise questions about the larger discourses taking place.
Give your friends a hand, help them out!
In this second image (though some of the day counters have been altered for meme effect), is (otherwise) what the user sees when they log on to play CCS. By
telling the user which of their friends have not been playing, and for how long
they haven’t played for, the user is then essentially utilized and exploited as
free labor by CCS. In “helping your friend,” who’s been “stuck for X amount of time,”
the user is appropriated into CCS service by having them nudge other players who may have stopped playing. It is akin to a digitized form of a tele-marketing or a customer service call from a
business which solicits you to use their services and/or product again. And in
the example above, while the time lengths are clearly exaggerated, I have been shown
players on my CCS screen who are well over 107 days without playing. I,
however, choose not nudge those players, as I don't want to be complicit in passive-aggressively harassing them into
playing once more. If they haven't played in a long time, they have chosen not
to do so, and I do not want to be appropriated and sent as a messenger for Mr. Toffee. However - in choosing whether to "help" your friends who are "stuck" or not (and I think the rhetorical choices made by King in this respect are worth mention as well) is virtually the
only agency that the user, as Tiffi, has. We can make the choice to either send them a
“gift” (a.k.a. “nudge, nudge”) or not, but that is truly one of the only options we are given - short of actually playing the game or not.